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"He would have been among the league leaders in batting average for a majority of the season had he had enough plate appearances." -- 2008 St. Louis Cardinals Media Guide about non-roster invitee Mark Johnson

Tuesday, November 27, 2007

Strikes Percentage, Active Players with 200+ IP

Today I want to look at the active players with 200 or more career innings pitched that throw the lowest percentage of strikes. On baseball-reference the data for this goes back only to 2000, so it's hard to make a general conclusion beyond throwing more strikes would probably help these guys. Of course, the range of the sample is between 56.3 and 70.1%, so it's not like they're far beyond gone.

Here are the thirty-nine (out of 347) active pitchers with 200+ IP below 60.0% strikes thrown for their career:

John Parrish, 56.3%

Victor Zambrano, 57.4%

J.C. Romero, 57.7%

Daniel Cabrera, 58.2%

Dennys Reyes, 58.2%

Jim Brower, 58.5%

Seth McClung, 58.6%

Jamey Wright, 58.6%

Mike MacDougal, 58.8%

Jorge de la Rosa, 58.8%

Scott Willamson, 58.8%

Chad Billingsley, 58.9%

Justin Miller, 58.9%

Victor Santos, 58.9%

Zach Day, 58.9%

Shawn Chacon, 59.0%

Julian Tavarez, 59.0%

Lance Cormier, 59.1%

Brandon Duckworth, 59.1%

Russ Ortiz, 59.1%

Jaret Wright, 59.2%

Mike Wood, 59.4%

Rick Ankiel, 59.4%

Tom Glavine, 59.5%

Derrick Turnbow, 59.5%

Jesus Colome, 59.6%

Dewon Brazelton, 59.6%

Sean Douglass, 59.6%

Clay Hensley, 59.7%

Jorge Julio, 59.7%

Colby Lewis, 59.7%

Tony Armas, Jr., 59.8%

Kyle Davies, 59.8%

Ron Villone, 59.8%

Todd Wellemeyer, 59.8%

Jay Witasick, 59.8%

Edwin Jackson, 59.9%

Jason Jennings, 59.9%

Nate Cornejo, 59.9%

Tom Glavine is the best pitcher on the list by far, but keep in mind this is only the part of his career since the millennium. Russ Ortiz and Jason Jennings are the only others with over 1000 innings since 2000. I also set it to look for only active players, so I'm not sure why Nate Cornejo, Sean Douglass, Dewon Brazleton, and Zach Day show up; they could be bouncing around the minors somewhere, I suppose.

I might as well list the highest strikes percentages on the list as well. Taking 66.7% (two thirds strikes) and 200 IP as the minimum, here are the top fifteen active hurlers in terms of highest strikes percentage:

Rafael Betancourt, 70.1%

Curt Schilling, 69.3%

Mariano Rivera, 68.5%

David Wells, 68.4%

Paul Byrd, 68.4%

Josh Towers, 68.1%

John Smoltz, 68.0%

Roy Oswalt, 67.8%

Scott Baker, 67.7%

Jon Lieber, 67.4%

Trevor Hoffman, 67.2%

Chad Bradford, 67.1%

Mike Timlin, 67.0%

Greg Maddux, 67.0%

Eddie Guardado, 66.9%

A lot of decent pitchers show up here, as you'd expect. Josh Towers certainly throws strikes, but he hasn't found the success nearly everyone else on the list has. Ditto Scott Baker, though he's certainly got a couple years yet to develop.